Although Microsoft is unveiling Silverlight, its browser plug-in technology for rich media experiences, on Monday, the company will reveal more about the software later this month.At the Mix07 conference in Las Vegas on April 30, Microsoft will detail development methodologies and capabilities as well as languages and tools associated with Silverlight, said Forest Key, director of product management for the Microsoft server and tools division. Silverlight previously was known as Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere. A beta version of Silverlight is planned for release at the Mix07 show.Key did note that the company has earmarked its Expression Studio and Visual Studio tools for use with Silverlight. Serving as a rival to Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash plug-in technology, Silverlight is intended to bolster Web applications with multimedia, even extending video experiences to mobile phones. “The development community is very interested in building these types of applications in the future, so we’re very excited to be able to offer Silverlight,” Key said. Microsoft believes it offers a more standards-based approach than Flash by supporting the VC-1 video codec. But an Adobe official disagreed that.“I would say the prevalence of Flash video in terms of usage with YouTube and MySpace would tend to counter that argument,” said Pam Deziel, director of product marketing for the Adobe Platform business unit. Given Adobe’s success with Flash video, it makes sense for Microsoft to shift its own emphasis to video, Deziel said. As far as competing with Microsoft, Deziel stressed the benefits of competition and how Adobe would still lead the way.“I think we’ll continue to innovate and lead in the [Web development arena] and that competition is good both for the industry and for end users,” she said. Software Development